


Tie Our Hands to Something Solid

by winter_rogue



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-21
Updated: 2011-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_rogue/pseuds/winter_rogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never slept with Dr. M. Rodney McKay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tie Our Hands to Something Solid

**Author's Note:**

> Written for love_bingo prompt “gone too soon.” Italics from “forgetting something” by Nick Flynn. unbeta’d

He never slept with Dr. M. Rodney McKay. He put it off.

Five years living in each other’s pockets, fighting, swearing, bleeding and very nearly dying together, and he’d thought about it. Of course he had thought about it, kept the idea a secret inside his chest. It wasn’t something to be pulled out and polished but rather glanced at from time to time obliquely, when he was brave enough. It was just an idea, a possibility, nothing needed to come of it today or tomorrow or six months from now.

Their lives may / have been / are crazy, frantic things, but there was time. One day he wouldn’t see it coming, some day it just might jump out at him, opportunity / like the right time / out of his acute peripheral vision, and --

 

Rodney was talking about the east coast. It was a little difficult, more than a little disgusting, translating his rapid stream of words between bites of egg and bacon and long sips of specialty coffee but after all this time John thought himself something of a proficient. Still, this morning, seated in the mostly empty mess hall, warm Pacific sunlight streaming through Ancient stained glass, he was having a little bit of trouble.

Why were they talking about, Rhode Island? Connecticut? John frowned into his own cup of / regular / coffee.

“Huh?”

“Are you listening at all? You aren’t are you? Honestly Colonel, I really do wonder why I bother.”

“Sorry, sorry, jeez. I--”

“There’s a medical conference, in New Hampshire of all things,” Rodney huffs a little and rolls his eyes, grinning underneath.

“You’re going with her,” John can see how pleased he is underneath the mock irritation.

“Well, it’s not like I’ve got anything to do around here you know? This way she gets to attend her conference, we take a long weekend for ourselves, a real vacation. There might have been a suggestion of meeting her parents,” he looks a little worried now but smiles gamely, forgetting his eggs for a minute.

John hmmms noncommittally.

“What? What ‘hmm’?”

“Nothing! You have a good time Rodney,” he’s starring too hard at the cold, gooey mess of his own breakfast. He’s hardly touched it, mostly spent the morning stirring it around while he listened to Rodney and failed to connect the dots.

“Right, well, yes. I fully intend to,” and Rodney smiles to himself, drains his coffee, walks away.

Later, John remembers to bus their trays.

 

/ _try this, close your eyes_ /

 

John felt scoured down to nothing, lost at the end of the universe where nothing remained but sand, wind and sun. Even here, all out of time, he still had this ghost of his friend. Even here, Rodney had found him.

Now he was frozen with his life slowed down til it could barely do more than trickle by. But John was not a man prone to self-reflection. He slept and did not imagine the life McKay had lived, alone, in self-imposed exile, desperately stretching the laws of physics as he knew them until they bent to his will. John did not let himself remember dreaming for a thousand years alone.

This wasn’t important. Rodney had ensured a way for him to get back. He would have all the time in the world, after.

 

/ _no, wait_ /

 

This moment Rodney does not remember. In the infirmary he bitches about the mission, the planet, the hike with the sun and the bugs and the twitchy medieval natives. He does not remember anything after the mob that nearly consumed them, the knife that nearly gutted him, or when John did more than nearly kiss him. He does not recall bleeding out in bright red and ichor across John’s hands until he was cold, pale and too weak to even gasp.

John remembers in that way he does, cutting out the memory and putting in its place where he doesn’t have to actively recall it anymore. But he remembers the paralyzing fear that gripped him and the moment of weakness when he really believed they’d finally run out of luck and he’s clasped his numb lips to Rodney’s too-quiet mouth; breathed and gasped until the moment passed and backup arrived and they all made it back alive.

Rodney forgot and John let himself be a coward.

 

/ _when-if- we see each other again_ /

 

Rodney was looking at him with worried eyes of his. Everything in his manner bleeding out mistake mistake mistake and he was sorry, John could see that. Rodney was sorry and panicked and frightened behind the bitter twist of his mouth because suddenly he realized what it meant to have something to lose.

John evaded, he bundled himself behind zippers and doors and sarcasm and a fake bright smile. He tells McKay, maybe and give me time, he marks out a careful boundary between them here and now because either time will tear that space down or it’ll hold. Right at this exact moment John tells himself he doesn’t care which way it goes.

This man was not what John had been looking for, but somewhere this is what he found. Somewhere between fighting, bitching, mortal peril, and the wraith, this man is what he’s / could have / got.

 

/ _first thing_ /

 

John realized it was only a matter of time when he said it So long Rodney and it wasn’t the end. Really, what else could the universe throw at them? How else could the universe interrupt or slow them down, after that? John wasn’t sure how he felt about this runaway train, but he knew it would hit him in the end.

 

/ _if we see each other again_ /

 

Now John stands with Jeannie on one side and Teyla on the other. He can feel Ronon like a sentinel just behind his shoulder. Briefly, Jeannie took his hand and squeezed it too tightly between her pale, cold fingers and then she let go. No one else touches him.

His mind keeps skipping over what it sees: a hole, a pile of comely dirt, rows of military and civilians in somber colors, Jennifer Keller bruised and white like a sheet.

This is John Sheppard -- he has run out of time.

/ _no, first we should tie our hands to something_ / solid.


End file.
